Obama’s flip-flop, deer and wildlife and criticizing Kobach

Holding back

I find it more than a bit interesting that former President Barack Obama is now ridiculing politicians who lie.

I voted for him in 2008, in part because I distinctly remember in three separate interviews that when asked about same-sex marriage, he definitively said he believed marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

After being re-elected in 2012, he mysteriously “evolved” on the subject, coming out in favor of same-sex marriage.

I guess “evolved” means stating a particular belief until it is no longer politically dangerous to say what you really believe.

Ronald Davidson

Lexington, Mo.

Two different tacks

In The Star’s “Tweet of the Week” Thursday, President Donald Trump suggested that the legal system is treating his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, worse than Al Capone. (12A)

What an odd comparison. Actually, Manafort isn’t simply an innocent being. He knowingly ignored a court order and is experiencing the consequences of his actions.

Interesting that Trump once claimed Manafort was a very minor, short-lived figure in his organization — and now the president is defending him.

Is Trump really just defending Manafort for possible obstruction of justice? Or, fearing himself to be an eventual target, is Trump beginning an attack on the legal system. Or both?

If all goes poorly for Trump, will the court system join the media as the “enemy of the people,” the “most dishonest people” and “fake,” I wonder?

How do you know Trump is lying? His lips are moving or he is on Twitter.

Walter Finch

Olathe

Fair hunting

I was pleased to see that the Missouri Supreme Court has finally decided that deer are wildlife and not livestock, as deer-farm operators had been lobbying politicians in Jefferson City.

How is it that the average person cannot keep a deer as a pet, yet deer farms can pen them up in a enclosed area for people to shoot?

Hunting rights should be equal for all men, women and children. The people of Missouri should speak out for these rights.

There should be no deer farms. All hunters should take their chances just like anyone else.

The Missouri Department of Conservation was established as a non-political agency, but politicians continue to attempt to bring it under their control. I am willing to bet that the people of Missouri would fight any changes to that structure in the court system.

The people of Missouri need to speak up to make all hunting rights in the state equal for all who want to hunt.

Tom Melton

Doniphan, Mo.

Rights vs. needs

When I heard that you could find directions for how to make a bomb on the internet, I was appalled and upset. Now I see we might be granted directions on how to manufacture a gun with a 3-D printer. (Aug. 1, 9A, “Judge blocks posting of blueprints for homemade guns”)

Again, upset.

As an Air Force officer in the missile field, I was granted a top-secret security clearance — but that did not give me permission to access any top-secret document I might want to see. I also had to have a “need to know.”

I wish the public could understand that we all might have the right to know how to build a bomb or print a gun, but the public does not have a need to know. There is a difference.

Too bad there isn’t some judicial way to label some information available to the public on a need-to-know basis only.

Don Homrighausen

Overland Park

From the past

In David McCullough’s book “John Adams,” he quotes a 1776 letter from the Founding Father to James Warren:

“We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger, that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear, that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence, by noise not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance not learning. By contracted hearts not large souls.”

So here we are in the 21st century seeing that Congress, for the most part, has become Adams’ fear.

Patricia J. Blanchat

Overland Park

What’s left?

Just a simple question for The Star’s unbiased editorial staff: Has Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach ever done anything right? Pun intended.

Tom Horton

Shawnee